The present disclosure relates to a mobile apparatus.
Research and development have been made for an autonomous mobile apparatus, for example, a vehicle that automatically locates itself at a target location with respect to a reference object. This type of mobile apparatus generally determines its target location based on a route data obtained by detecting a reference object by means of sensors.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H03-252707 discloses an unmanned forklift truck having a camera and a sensor. With this forklift truck, when the distance between the vehicle body of the forklift truck and its reference object is long, a wide route data is generated using an image data from the camera and the vehicle body is moved to the vicinity of the reference object according to the generated wide route data. When the vehicle body comes to the vicinity of the reference object, the sensor detects the reference object and an approaching route data is corrected based on the detection of the sensors, and the vehicle body is moved to the target location according to the corrected approaching route data.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-65342 discloses a mobile robot that measures a distance between the mobile robot and a reference object using a laser range sensor and determines its location and posture with respect to the reference object based on the measurement to thereby determine its target location. The mobile robot is configured such that, when a reference object is at a long distance from the robot, the laser range sensor does not start measurement of distance to the reference object (i.e., determination of the location and the posture of the mobile robot with respect to the reference object) until the mobile robot comes to the vicinity of the reference object.
The unmanned forklift truck of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No, H03-252707 and the mobile robot of the Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-65342 determine the target locations precisely by detecting the reference object with sensors. However, the above unmanned forklift truck and the mobile robot need to pause temporarily in order to detect the reference object by the sensors, with the result that the time for moving to the target location is prolonged by the detecting time for which the forklift truck and the mobile robot are paused. This increase in the moving time leads to an increase in the working time as a whole. In view of the above circumstances, the present disclosure is directed to a mobile apparatus that is capable of reducing the time for moving to its target location.